FLAGS OF REVOLUTIONARY AFGHANISTAN (1978-1992)
This flag was used shortly after the April 1978 Revolution, till 1 January 1980.....Afghanistan's April Revolution was actually a military coup d'état, orchestrated by the Khalqi faction of the Marxist PDPA (People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan). This flag bore the name of the faction, and was used during the 16 month tenure of Nur Mohammad Taraki, the first Marxist President. Later, his deputy turned enemy, Hafizullah Amin, murdered him and ruled for four months from September to the end of December 1979; he used the PDPA Party flag as the national flag.....
The Khalqi faction was composed mostly of rustic Pashtuns, with a jealous aversion for the overly pretentious and refined city dweller Persians who dominated the rival Parchami faction...there were notable exceptions to this rule, too...
But the Khalqis soon overdid - and finally undid - themselves through their amateurish and extreme reform agendas, ruthless internal power struggles and violent contention with their Parchami rivals. All this endangered Afghanistan's Marxist regime and ignited a civil war of a religious colour, leading to inevitable Soviet military intervention, which overthrew the Khalqi faction and replaced it with a Parchami dominated setup under Babrak Karmal (1980-1986). This began what was referred to quite seriously as the Second Phase of the April Revolution...
This flag was used from 1980 till 1987; it incorporated the "traditional" Afghan national colours and a new state emblem, witth the Quran shown, to allay anti-revolutionary Islamic propaganda.
In 1986, the Russians replaced the effete Karmal with the more effective Najibullah - the ruthless secret police chief.....that year the CIA ratcheted up its counterrevolutionary Islamic Jihad, and armed the "Mujahideen" with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which brought about unfavourable changes and losses, and the failure of Soviet military tactics in Afghanistan...Najib was to be Afghan President from 1986 to 1992.
With the above downturn, it was clear by 1987 that most of the original Marxist objectives of the April Revolution had failed or been thwarted - and the USSR was also contemplating its pullout from a disastrous military situation. All this necessitated a revision of many of the PDPA's policies and image - and a broadening of its power base. A National Reconciliation policy was drawn up to facilitate these important changes in the uncertain post- withdrawal phase....it would not be incorrect to argue that with this, the "final", but failed stage of the April Revolution had begun, to paraphrase the Afghan ideologists' own terms.....
In 1987, in accordance with this new policy, of which Najib was to be the image and protagonist, the name of the country was changed to Republic of Afghanistan, the PDPA was renamed Hizb-e-Watan (the Party of the Country), and the above flag was introduced - in which the national emblem was modified by removing the öffensive" communist red star and cog-wheel, but the book (Quran) was also removed, as the pulpit was already considered sufficient to represent Islam.....this flag was used till the collapse of Najib's government on 28 April 1992, brought about by the fall of the USSR some 6 months earlier - and also by relentless Pakistani mischief and ambition, to whose machinations the Americans had left the Afghan field open after their victory over the USSR in 1991.....